Gambling is an international pastime that involves placing bets on events with the hope of winning money or prizes, often in the hope that someone may come out ahead financially. Most individuals participate in this form of entertainment responsibly; however, some become too heavily invested in gambling to be considered healthy, leading to negative personal, familial, community/society impacts.
Gambling can become problematic quite quickly, yet without outward signs similar to drug or alcohol addiction. Instead, symptoms of gambling problems often include conflicts with family and friends, financial strain, feelings of anger or fear and persistent guilt and shame – signs that it needs addressing as the first step to recovery from gambling problems. Recognizing these issues early is key to healing from them.
Gambling problems typically start off small but quickly become out of hand. A person may start gambling occasionally for entertainment or as a means to relieve boredom, only to become hooked and begin betting more frequently in hopes of generating bigger wins – known as compulsive gambling and leading to serious adverse impacts in terms of health, finances, relationships and work performance.
Gambling refers to an array of activities spanning traditional casino games to sports betting and online casinos. With social media and mobile phones making betting accessible anywhere at any time and time zone worldwide, this has caused gambling prevalence rates to significantly rise, particularly among young people and low socioeconomic groups.
Even though recovering from gambling addiction is possible, many find it challenging to do it on their own. Therapy may help control urges and address underlying issues related to your gambling behaviors – these could include depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder – all which have been associated with such addiction.
An individual can reduce their risk for gambling by restricting their access to money. They can do this by ditching credit cards (or only using ones that cannot be used on gambling sites), closing online betting accounts, giving a spouse or parent control of their finances and keeping only limited cash on hand at all times. Furthermore, they may wish to inform gambling establishments they frequent that they have an addiction and ask them not to allow entry for now.
Research on gambling has demonstrated both positive and negative social and economic effects; however, no standardized methodology exists for analyzing this impact. Studies tend to focus on financial costs/benefits while disregarding non-monetary impacts like those felt by individuals, families or communities. A conceptual model presented here serves as a starting point for identifying scope of impacts as well as measuring them accurately.
